A great friendship: At 106, Hilda Broad (left) has a bond with 96-year-old Julia Dietz that goes back to the 1940s.Justine Fenu/The Post-Standard

Hilda Broad went to college at Bryn Mawr, in Pennsylvania, with the older sister of Julia Dietz. A few years later, Hilda married, and her husband’s business brought them to Syracuse. When Julia, too, settled in this area, her older sister told her:

“Once you’re there, you must look up Hilda Broad.”

That wasn’t long after World War II. The two women were about 10 years apart in age. If it mattered then, it doesn’t anymore.

Between them, the longtime friends have lived more than two centuries. Hilda is 106. Julia — a great-granddaughter of President Ulysses Grant — turns 97 in January.

They had one of their regular visits Thursday at The Nottingham, a senior living community in Jamesville. Hilda lives there. Julia got a ride from Barbara Rabin, a fellow member of the Book Club, a Syracuse reading group with roots in the 1940s.

The members are very close. They had their annual Christmas party last week at the Century Club. Julia made it. Hilda didn’t. Everyone felt her absence.

Hilda is a poet. She can readily quote Lord Byron, and his take on how youth serves as “our days of glory.” Even so, to her friends, she only grows more glorious. The Book Club members always look forward to the holiday party, where Hilda typically offers what she describes as “doggerel.” Once, she did a December poem that mentioned every member by name.

The meeting at the Nottingham, for Hilda and Julia, was an addendum to tradition.

They were asked — in a world that’s gone through so much change — if they take deep comfort from their conversations.

“If we can hear each other,” said Julia, and both women laughed out loud.

They have never been willing to fade into old age. Julia golfed until she was 85. On Hilda’s 80th birthday, she told her husband she had the urge to play a round. The next day, they went to the Onondaga Golf & Country Club. Hilda scored the only hole in one of her life.

“For that,” she said, “everyone remembers me forever after.”

History? It literally runs in Julia’s veins. She has a personal tie to Lincoln, the new film about the legendary president: Her great-grandfather, Ulysses Grant, is prominent in the story.

Julia and her late husband, John, named one of their sons after the American general and president. On her mother’s side, Julia is the granddaughter of Elihu Root, a Nobel Peace prize winner who lived until 1937. While Julia vividly remembers Root, both Grant and his son Fred, Julia’s grandfather, were dead long before she was born.

Gen. Ulysses Grant (left) great-grandfather of Julia Dietz of Fayetteville, is shown in this famed John Rogers sculpture with President Abraham Lincoln and Edwin Stanton, Lincoln's secretary of war.Kevin Jacobus/The Post-Standard

Julia doubts she’ll go to the movie because of a simple reality: Her vision, she said, isn’t good enough to see it. Hilda, too, has lost much of her eyesight. Yet her memory works just fine. Hilda recalled how — during her days at Bryn Mawr — she was a summer nanny for the celebrated writer, Roger Angell. “I can’t believe he’s still going,” she said of Angell, 90, who is 16 years her junior.

She also described a moment of chance that determined the course of her life.

When Hilda was a young woman, she went to a wedding that her future husband also attended. They were introduced casually, but the odds seemed slender they’d ever meet again.

Not long after the event, Hilda was visiting a friend’s family when the telephone rang. For a reason she can’t explain, she picked it up and identified herself by name. The caller was surprised. It was her future husband, who happened to be calling Hilda’s friends.

“Remember me?” he said.

They went out to dinner in Philadelphia. He was supposed to leave town, but Hilda said, “He kept canceling his trains.”

If she hadn’t said her name over the phone, she probably would have led an entirely different life. Instead, she married William Broad and settled in Syracuse. Her husband, who died in 2000, would serve as president of the Central New York Community Foundation and chairman of the board at Cazenovia College.

Hilda and Julia alternate between gentle wisdom and dry, magnificent humor. Thursday, during the final moments of an interview, they were asked to explain the secret of their long lives.

Julia shrugged. “I did everything wrong,” she said, with a touch of a smile. Hilda, asked the same question, said in a solemn voice: